Second Draft Chapter 8

“So what’s the deal between you and Helen,” Simon asked me one day.

“Who?”

“Who?” Simon repeated mockingly. He turned to David, “Look at that! He acts like he doesn’t even know her. Now I know for sure something’s up.”

David wasn’t a jerk like Simon, but he did look over at me and add, “You are always talking to her Jon.”

“She sits right next to me. What am I supposed to do? Just ignore her all the time?”

Simon was ready for this. “Well, you sit right next to Christopher also. How come I don’t see you talking to him all the time?” [Go back and make seating chart clearer].

“Christopher? Come on Christopher? He’s the most boring guy alive. Besides, Helen’s new here. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.”

“Yeah, right, so the fact that she’s a beautiful girl has absolutely nothing to do with it?” Simon pressed.

“You think she’s beautiful?” Helen was beautiful, but not in the way most people usually think. She had kind of a hidden beauty, that only appears gradually to you after you’ve been talking to her for a while. I thought I was the only one who had noticed it.

Simon and David exchanged glances, and I knew I had given the wrong response. “So you’re going to deny this as well, Jon?” Simon said. “You’re the only guy in class who doesn’t think she’s beautiful, and yet you spend all your time talking to her.”

I had just about had my fill of Simon. I turned to David to see what he would say. “You must have heard other people talk about her,” David said. “Everyone thinks she’s pretty.”

“I thought it was just me.”

“Aha,” Simon said triumphantly. “Now it’s out at last.”

“No, really, I thought I was the only one who thought she was pretty.” I spoke mostly to David. I was doing my best to ignore Simon. “I mean, she’s not nearly as beautiful as Rosa.”

Simon scoffed at this comparison. “I don’t like Rosa very much. She seems too, I don’t know, she seems too cold. But Helen has a lot of warmth to her. Helen seems like someone you can talk to.”

I seized on this. “Yeah, see? She’s someone you can talk to. She’s an easy person to talk to, so no one should think it’s strange that I’ve been talking to her a lot.” Too late, I realized that the rapid way in which the words spilled out of my mouth made me sound like someone too eager to defend his innocence. In the silence that followed, I could see that there was now no doubt in either of their minds.

“You should just ask her out,” Simon said.

He was enjoying watching me squirm a little bit too much, so I decided to cut him down to size. “Simon, I’ve only known her for two weeks. Now you’ve been talking about Leda for almost a year now, and you’ve known her ever since the first grade. When you ask Leda out, I’ll ask Helen out.”

“I asked Leda out as my date for the end of the year banquet.”

Well, that shut me up. I simply stared back in silence.

“You should ask Helen to the banquet.” David said. “Besides, did you hear where the banquet is being held this year? It’s in the University. You remember we always wanted to see what was behind those walls. This could be our chance.”

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Spring was in full bloom at the time, and summer was fast approaching. The election had come and went, and Christopher had been elected class president. Orion was president of the senior class and the head of the student body.

I was walking with Helen after school one day when I brought up the subject. “I really appreciate you showing me around everywhere Jon,” she said. “I would have been lost with out you.”

“You have a lot of friends,” I said. “I’m sure anyone would be glad to show you around.”

“Well, you’re the only one who’s been kind enough to do it so far,” she said.

I pointed at the chapel tower off in the distance. “Do you see that,” I asked.

“What?”

“The big tower with the cross on top of it.”

“Oh, yes, what is that? I’ve been meaning to ask. I see it everyday when I’m walking home from school.”

“That’s the steeple for the University chapel.”

“Wow. That’s a University chapel? It’s a lot nicer than our school chapel.”

“Yeah, well, this is the best University in the country, so they really went all out on the buildings.”

“Amazing,” she said. “It completely towers over the whole city, doesn’t it? No matter where I am I can always look over and see it.” She paused. There was a breathless quality in her words, as if she were seeing the chapel tower for the first time. Then she turned to face me with eyes full of excitement. “You know, we don’t have anything like that in the West.”

“The other buildings inside the University are supposed to be even more impressive. Most of them were built hundreds of years ago, but they’re still used today.”

“I want to go see them.”

“I’d like to too, but there very strict. Only students can enter the University gates. No one else.”

“No one?”

“Well the teachers and the professors of course. And the police if they need to, although mostly the Cadets handle any problems on campus. But ordinary people like you or me can’t just walk on up and go in. David and I have tried loads of times. They have guards at the door, and a huge wall that goes all around the outside of the campus.”

“Why are they so strict? It’s a University, right? Not a fortress. The Universities in the West we can visit anytime we want to.”

I was somewhat at a loss to answer this. Having grown up in this city, I had just assumed it was perfectly normal for Universities to be shut up and guarded. I never thought that there might be a different way to run them. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just the way things are here. But, I have some good news. I know a way we can get in.”

“Buy tickets?”

“No. You know about our class banquet, right?” She shook her head. “Well, every year our school has a banquet for the upperclassman to celebrate the end of the year. This is the first year our class is old enough to go, so it will be the first time for all of us. And, the banquet is going to be held in the University this year.”

“So if we go to the banquet, we get to see the inside of the University?” she concluded. “Where do I sign up?”

“Most people go with dates.”

“Oh,” she said, slightly disappointed.

“Which is why I wanted to talk to you about this,” I said hurriedly. I then paused to check the reaction on her face. She seemed to know what I was going to say next, and her face had a look of eager expectation. This encouraged me enough to go on. “You see, I don’t have a date for the banquet, and I figure you are new here and you maybe don’t know a lot of people yet. I mean, you know people, but you don’t know them well. So I was thinking you might be interested in going to the banquet with me.” I was trying to keep a calm face on the outside, but inwardly I was cringing at my own words. Why did I always sound so stupid at important times?

Fortunately she responded quickly, saving me from a prolonged embarrassment. “Yes, of course Jon, I would love to go with you.”

Immediately the nervousness inside me was replaced by excitement. “Really?”

“Of course. You’ve been so kind to me the past couple weeks.”

“Well then it’s settled. I’ll take care of signing us up and everything, if you’re sure about it.”

“Yes Jon, absolutely, I’d really love to go with you.” She glanced at the clock tower. “I’ve got to go Jon. My dad always gets worried if I’m not home right after school. But I’ll see you tomorrow at school, okay? We’ll talk more about the banquet later.”

She hurried off, stopping once in the middle of the street to wave good-bye to me, and then disappearing into the crowd.

*******************************************************************************

She wanted to go with me. She would love to go with me. She would really love to go with me. She would absolutely really love to go with me.

I turned the words over and over again in my head, hardly believing my good luck. The words soared through my brain. Love to go with me. Really love to go with me.

I couldn’t wait for the next day of school. Simon would be looking at me with his sneering smile, and he would ask if I was going to ever get the courage to ask Helen out. And I would reply, yes, as a matter of fact Simon, I did, and she said she would absolutely really love to come with me. Absolutely. And then the expression on Simon’s face would fall.

I arrived the next day at school to see Simon’s face already fallen, but I was too excited by what I had to tell that I barely noticed it. I was sure he would ask me about the banquet first thing when he saw me. Simon probably couldn’t wait to continue gloating about how he had a date and I didn’t. But he was going to get a surprise when he tried to bring that line on today. And of course David would be surprised as well.

David! I hadn’t even thought about him. Who was David bringing to the banquet? What girl did David like? For the first time I felt guilty for not having considered David’s feeling at all. I never thought of him having any independent hopes or desires of his own. I just considered David an extension of myself. He was there to support me. He wanted whatever would make me happy.

But this moment of guilt passed just as quickly as it had come on. I was too focused on my own happiness. She would love to come with me. Absolutely really love to come with me.

To my annoyance, Simon and David avoided the subject of the banquet from the moment I first met up with them. They talked about everything else but the banquet. I restrained myself from bringing up the subject. I wanted things to go just how I had imagined them. Simon would bring it up in his sneering tone, and then I would, casually, mention that yes I had asked Helen, and she would absolutely really love to come with me, and that would knock Simon right off his arrogant platform.

But eventually, seeing that the subject of the banquet couldn’t be further from their minds that day, I gave in to my temptation and brought it up myself. “You remember that banquet we were talking about yesterday?” I said in my best casual voice.

“It’s been cancelled,” Simon answered flatly. I already had my mouth open ready to go on with my next line, but I stopped. And it was at that point that I started to notice the depressed look that had been on Simon’s face all morning.

“Cancelled?”

“Yeah, cancelled.”

This may have been the first year that our class was eligible, but the banquet was a proud old school tradition. I couldn’t imagine it had been cancelled. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Something about trouble at the University.”

“Did you ask Helen?” David asked me. I nodded, still absorbing the new information. “And did she say yes.”

“Yeah.”

“Well there you go then. Congratulations. The banquet itself is just some boring school ceremony anyway. The important thing is that she said yes.”

I appreciated him trying to cheer me up, but my thoughts were wandering elsewhere. “You know,” I said, “for a little while there, it almost seemed like we were actually going to get inside the University and see what it’s like.”
\
Simon laughed at this. “Jon, the point wasn’t the University itself. That was just the venue. The point is our school banquet.”

“Still, it would have been nice to see what the University is actually like,” I persisted. “After all those years of just staring at the outer wall.”

“Who cares? In a few years we’ll be students there, and then we’ll see it everyday, until the mere sight of it will make us want to throw up, just like our school now. The University isn’t a fun place. It’s where people go to study. I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with getting in there. You’ve let your imagination run wild with all the things you imagine are inside. I bet its boring and drab and awful just like the school we go to everyday now.”

David took my side. “Still Simon, aren’t you the least bit curious to see what’s inside?”

“I’ve been inside loads of times,” a new voice called out. Icarus had overheard what we were talking about, and was walking up to join us.

“You have not,” I said firmly. I had little patience for Icarus’s nonsense, and it was important t stop him early on before he got started on another ridiculous story.

“Sure I have,” he insisted.

I groaned inwardly. He wasn’t going to make this easy. He was going to persist in telling his story. “No, you haven’t Icarus, so knock it off. Nobody gets inside except the University Students.”

“It’s easy if you know how,” Icarus said.

“And why do you know how?” David asked in an amused voice. David took an entirely different attitude towards Icarus than I did. David liked Icarus. Well, David liked everybody. He didn’t have a single enemy. But he seemed to find Icarus especially entertaining, and liked having him around.

“Because my father designed it.”

I liked at Simon, and I could tell Simon shared my annoyance. “Icarus that University is hundreds of years old,” Simon blurted out. “It’s almost as old as Fabulae itself. What do you mean telling us your father designed it?”

“Well, he redesigned it. After the Restoration. They redid the whole place after the Restoration you know. Widened the streets inside, got ride of some of the old troublesome buildings near the student center, and added all sorts of secret entrances all along the wall.”

“Secret entrances?” I couldn’t believe that I was wasting time listening to this.

“All sorts of them. Most people don’t know about them, but I know about them.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” I said. “All around the campus wall there are all sorts of secret entrances, which somehow no one has realized all these years, except for you.”

“I know about them because my father designed them,” Icarus responded.

“Well, I think I’ve heard enough of this for one day,” Simon said with his usual abruptness. With a look of disgust, Simon bowed out of our circle and went across the schoolyard to talk to Matthew, shaking his head in disbelief as he walked away.

“So is that how you get in the University?” David asked. “Through the secret entrances hidden in the wall.” David spoke in a friendly tone, but there was a slight gleam in his eye which suggested he found the whole thing quite funny. Still, I wouldn’t say he was making fun of Icarus. David was more inviting Icarus to take part in the joke with him.

“Oh no, those are only for emergencies. Usually I just walk through the front gates.”

“We’ve already tried that. They stop you right at the front gate as soon as they realize you’re still in school.” Perhaps I was more similar to Simon than I liked to admit. There was something inside me, an impatience perhaps or a hidden aggressiveness, that wouldn’t allow me to treat the whole thing as a joke the way David did.

“But if you act like you belong, they’ll never notice. They have thousands of students in that University. Do you think the guards can keep track of them all? If you have your head down and you look nervous or apologetic, they’ll send you right back. But if you keep your back straight, look the guards right in the eye and say ‘good afternoon’ in a nice clear voice, like you know what you’re doing, they’ll let you right through. I’ve done it so many times they think I’m a student there.”

“Why so many times?” David asked. “Is the University that interesting?”

“The art department is. It’s absolutely amazing. And the view from the chapel steeple would blow your mind.”

“They don’t let you climb the chapel steeple,” I snapped.

“Well, you’re not supposed to, no. But it’s not like they have people guarding the steeple. Once you make through the University gates, you can pretty much do what you want.”

“Would you take us with you sometime?” David asked. I looked at David’s face to see if he was still having fun with Icarus, or if he was actually serious.

Icarus appeared to mull the matter over. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I’ve got a nice thing going. I come and go now just like a student. I don’t want you two to screw things up. If we mess this up even once, it will be hard for me to get back in.”

“How would we mess it up?” David asked.

“I think you’d be fine, but Jon has a troublesome look about him that the guards are sure to notice.” Icarus was now talking directly to David as if I wasn’t even there.

David couldn’t help but laugh a little at this point. Then he pretended to examine me. “Yes. Yes I see what you mean. He does look like trouble. The guards would never let him in. I know I’d never let someone who looked like that into my house.”

“This whole thing is ridiculous,” I blurted out. “First of all, Icarus, nobody has ever said I look troublesome until now.”

“They were probably just being polite,” he rejoined quickly. I ignored this and continued.

“Secondly, I don’t know what you’re worried about because if you can’t get through at the main gate, then you can just use one of those secret entrances you were just telling us about. And thirdly, this whole conversation has been nothing but a huge waste of time. I’ll be damned if you’ve ever seen the inside of the University even once.”

None of this seemed to bother Icarus. He just shrugged his shoulders. “Okay fine, don’t come. It’s all the same to me. You guys would just slow me down anyway.”

Icarus was on the point of walking away when David reached out his hand to stop him. “No, hang on a minute,” he said. “We’ll come with you. If you’re willing to take us that is.”

“If you think you can keep up with me.”

“We’ll do our best. And I’ll try and make sure Jon doesn’t look too troublesome.”

In spite of himself, Icarus almost seemed pleased at having acquired some followers. “Okay, we meet in front of the schoolyard on Saturday at 9 AM sharp. Don’t be late.”

********************************************************************

It was unlike David, who was usually so cautious, to be so enthusiastic about a plan like this. But he explained himself very reasonably to me. “Look, I know Icarus is a bit over the top,” he said. “But that’s what makes him so interesting. He’s probably making it all up and he’s probably never been inside the University before. But if we don’t go with him, than we’ll never know for sure. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? We tried to get inside the University lots of times before. If Icarus’s plan doesn’t work, than they’ll just turn us away at the gates like they always do, and we’ll go home.”

Simon, however, showing his usual bull-headedness, refused to be talked into it. “For one thing I couldn’t care less about the University,” he said. “It’s just another school as far as I’m concerned. And besides I don’t believe Icarus’s stories for a second. He’s always telling ridiculous stories.”

Simon was certainly right on the last point, and yet I found myself agreeing with David. It was probably all lies, but if I didn’t go and find out for myself, then I would always be wondering about it.

On Saturday David and I met at the school a few minutes before 9. David had not forgotten his promise to make me look “less troublesome” and he had brought along a comb.

“Oh come on!” I objected. But I ended up combing my hair over to the side anyway, with David offering suggestions on my combing technique. When my hair refused to stay in place, David even went over to the stream to wet the comb, and I tried again.

“Well, I don’t know about less troublesome, but at least you look different than usual,” David commented. “Hopefully Icarus will approve.”

“You’d think I was dating Icarus,” I said, handing back the comb.

But when Icarus arrived, he didn’t comment on my appearance one way or the other. I don’t think he even noticed. “Are you ready?” he asked us. His voice seemed a bit put on, as if he were trying to establish some sort of authority over us just because we had agreed to follow him on this trip. But David just went along with it, and I forced myself to do the same.

Icarus had a green book bag resting on his shoulders. I assumed this was intended to give him the look of a University student, although in actuality made him look more like a schoolboy. The University students rarely carried book bags like that.

We followed his lead towards the University. Just before we came into view of the main gate, Icarus stopped us to review the plan. “Okay, remember keep your back straight and look confident. Act like you walk in and out all the time. Don’t avoid eye contact with the guards. Look them right in the eye. And smile. Smiles are important. Jon, let me see your smile.”

He seemed to take it for granted that I would be the one who would screw things up. He never asked to see David’s smile. I was so exasperated by Icarus’s behavior that I had a difficult time making a smile. I forced a grin in an attempt to humor him, but it wasn’t up to his standards.

“Mmmm,” Icarus muttered in a disapproving way while tapping the ground with his foot.

David quickly intervened. “Even the University students don’t go around smiling all the time, right? Suppose Jon’s just having a bad day. What if just you and I smile?”

Icarus pondered this briefly, and then accepted it. We approached the gate. I made eye contact with one of the guards, and he looked right back at me. Although it had been two years, I recognized him as one of the guards who had turned me away on a previous attempt. Would he recognize me? His eyes did seem to narrow, and they followed me as I walked up to the gate.

“Good morning,” Icarus called out. Once again, his voice seemed put on, as if he were trying to establish some sort of relationship with the guards where none had previously existed. They ignored his salutation and watched us approach in stony silence.

Right as we were about to enter, one of the guards stepped in front of us. “Just a minute boys. May I ask your business?”

I’m not sure what was going through Icarus’s head, but personally I knew it was all over the moment they stopped us. If our plan was to just smile our way through the gates to avoid suspicion, then that plan was already over. And once they began asking questions, they were bound to ask for our University papers eventually, which we didn’t have.

Icarus made the attempt anyway. “We’re students here,” he answered. “We’re just going back to our dorm rooms.”

To my surprise the guard didn’t even ask about our papers. Whether we were University students seemed irrelevant to him. He simply answered, “There’s trouble on campus. No ones allowed in or out today.”

“What sort of trouble?” Icarus asked.

“The usual. A few troublemakers. They’ll have it call cleaned up soon enough. Why don’t you come back and try again in a couple days.”

And so we left. Icarus looked at me very suspiciously, no doubt thinking I had been the reason we were refused entrance. For my part, I wondered what kind of trouble would mean no one was allowed in or out. Why couldn’t people get out?

“So do you try out the secret entrance now?” David asked hopefully. “I’m very curious to find out where those are anyway.”

Icarus looked uncomfortable. “Yes, if only I could remember where the secret entrances are.” He looked out into space as if trying to remember.

So the secret entrances had been a lie as well. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that. It had been stupid to get my hopes up in the first place.

“There is one more way inside,” Icarus said, sliding his book bag off over his shoulders, and motioning for us to come close. He undid the straps and lifted up the top very slightly, just slightly enough for David and I to peer inside.

He had a grappling hook inside. A long rope attached to a three-pronged metal hook. It was the kind of think I had seen pictures of before many times in adventure books, but never saw in real life.

Icarus quickly closed the bag back up again. “Of course, we can’t do it here,” he said. “But if we go around towards the back, there’s some parts of the wall that no one watches.”

Scale the walls? David and I looked at each other. Was Icarus serious about this, or was this another imaginary undertaking, like the secret entrances? Was he going to lead us around to the back of the campus, make a big production of things, and in the end not actually do it?

But then I remembered Icarus’ love of climbing the trees in the schoolyard, and I realized that this was for real. David had the same realization, and his manner began to change. He enjoyed this when he thought it was one big joke, but now that he realized we were actually going to scale the walls and illegally enter the campus, his cautious manner caused him to become nervous. “Icarus, you’re not going to use that thing, are you? I don’t think it’s safe.”

“Of course it’s safe. My dad made it. I use it all the time.” And with that Icarus turned and began walking along the wall. He assumed we would follow him, and didn’t even look back.

And so we followed. I was now beginning to feel excited about where this morning might lead us, and David had assumed the role of the detractor. “Icarus, are you sure about this?” he called out. “How many times have you used that thing?”

After about a half hour, we came to the back of the University, where the wall bordered the forest. The trees had been cut back just enough to prevent someone from getting over the wall by climbing the tree branches. But the wall was only about two stories high, so I imagine from some of the taller trees it would be possible to at least see over the wall.

Icarus took out his grappling hook, and discarded his book bag on the ground. He shook his limbs loose, and then began swinging the hook in a circle. He swung it faster and faster and then he threw it up towards the top of the wall.

The hook hit the wall about three quarters up, and then fell back down to the ground. Icarus swore and retrieved it. He brushed away some of the locks of hair that had fallen into his eyes, and started swinging the hook around again. Again he threw it and again it simply bounced off the wall. He didn’t look like he knew what he was doing, and David asked, “Are you sure you use that all the time Icarus?”

Icarus didn’t answer. He just brushed the hair out of his eyes again and started twirling the rope once again. This time the hook cleared the wall. He grabbed the end of the rope and pulled tight. The hook stayed. He pulled on it several more times just to make sure. He tested his weight by hanging off the rope and bouncing up and down. The hook stayed firm.

Then he turned to us. “Well, no sense in standing around here wasting time, huh? I’ll see you two at the top.” Half using the rope and half digging his feet into the crevices between the blocks, he scrambled to the top. In now time at all he was swinging his legs over the crest of the wall, and was standing on the other side. There must have been some sort of ledge at the other side of the wall that he could stand up on. He started motioning for the next one of us to climb up.

Icarus had made the climb look so easy that even David was feeling relieved, and all traces of nervousness I had were replaced by eager anticipation. I couldn’t wait to get to the other side. I eagerly grabbed the rope and tried to follow Icarus up.

I soon discovered that climbing the wall wasn’t as easy as Icarus had made it look. I didn’t have the balance, the arm strength, or the traction on my shoes to simply lean back and walk up the wall sideways the way people in books used these grappling hooks.

Fortunately there were some foot holes. The wall was ancient, just like the rest of the University, and it wasn’t made in the modern style of small bricks mortared together. Rather it was large almost bolder sized blocks placed on top of each other. They fitted loosely, and there was often room to stick in the tips of my shoes and get a small foothold, while I held onto the rope for balance. After some struggling, I made my way slowly up the wall like this.

Although it must have been close to ten by now, the air still had a quiet early morning feel. Perhaps that’s because we had moved away from the main streets and were now near the forest, but even the sound of birds or chirping insects seemed absent. It was silent as I struggled up. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing, my feet scrapping against the wall, and the occasional sound of the rope creaking.

“Hey, Come on Jon! Let’s go.” Icarus’ yell startled me and my feet slipped. I kept a tight hold on the rope, but my knees banged up against the wall as the rope swung in. The pain shot through the rest of my legs. I began cursing Icarus under my breath.

I squeezed my legs around the rope and shimmied up a little like we climbed ropes in gym class. But this soon tired my arms, and I began to look again for a foothold on the wall to redistribute my weight.

I climbed up a couple more blocks, and then I saw an outstretched hand ready to pull me up. I grabbed onto it with one hand, while keeping hold of the rope with the other. Icarus didn’t have the strength to pull me up by himself, and I had to squirm over the top mostly on my own strength. Nevertheless his outstretched hand and beaming smile felt welcoming. I saw how eager Icarus was to help me over, and I couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t so bad after all. He may have an active imagination, and he may be a bit obnoxious at times, but he deep down was really just a friendly guy.

I took in a brief look at the University campus which had so long played in my imagination, but I didn’t have time to take it in properly. David was starting his ascent, and Icarus and I yelled down encouragement at him.

David also had a hard time getting to the top. Like me he floundered around on the rope for a while, had trouble finding good footholds, and lost his footing twice. But he made it. And when he got to the top he had two pairs of arms reaching down to pull him up.

Now with David at the top, I could at last look out over the campus. It was a disappointment. I suppose, after having built it up in my mind for so many years, it couldn’t be anything but disappointing.

“Wow, it’s absolutely amazing,” David said. “It’s even better than I thought it would be.”

Icarus had no reaction. I guess he was trying to keep up his charade of having seen it before.

From where we had climbed up, at the back of the campus, we could see the buildings only as tiny miniatures in the distance. The chapel steeple was of course immediately recognizable. The rest of the buildings were all arranged around it in a circle, like planets orbiting the sun. But we could make out their outline only. We were at the edge of the campus by the nature preserve. And that was exceedingly ordinary. The pine trees and small bushes were an almost exact mirror of the scenery we had left behind on the other side.

We reversed the hook, and used the rope to lower ourselves down. Icarus went first again, followed by me and then David. Going down was a lot easier than going up. Once I had gotten about halfway down, I just let go of the rope and dropped down the rest of the way until I hit the soft ground. David kept a tight grip on the rope until his feet were touching the dirt.

Once we were all on the ground, Icarus grabbed the rope and tried to pull the hook down. It remained stuck in its spot. Icarus then shook the rope back and forth to try and dislodge the hook. Still no effect. “Well, at least we know the rope is secure,” David remarked.

Icarus started swearing and kicked the wall. “The hook must have gotten stuck in between the rocks,” he said.

“It’s no big deal,” I said. “We’ll just have to remember where we left the rope. Then we use it for our way out, and we can dislodge the hook when we’re back at the top.”

“Well, which way do we go first?” David asked, as he turned his attention to the campus.

“There’s a lake over this way,” Icarus exclaimed. And without waiting, he started walking through the trees. David and I automatically started following him. I didn’t think there was a lake anymore than I thought there were secret entrances, but the whole campus was new to us, and one direction was as good as the other. Besides, Icarus had gotten us this far, and I was beginning to trust him in spite of myself.

Weaving in and out of trees, we walked up over a hill and down to the other side of it. At the bottom was a small pond.

It wasn’t a lake like Icarus claimed, but it was unmistakably a body of water. And he had headed towards it in a straight line and with such confidence that it didn’t seem to be a coincidence. I began to wonder if he actually had been here sometime before.

“This is a great place for a swim,” Icarus declared. He was already taking off his shoes and socks.

Although it was now close to mid-day now, it was still spring weather. It was warm enough so that it wouldn’t be painful to swim, but not quite hot enough that we felt the desire. But in the time it took me to think about this, Icarus had already stripped down to the nude and had jumped in.

Obviously none of us had the foresight to have brought swimming suits. David was especially uncomfortable about swimming nude. “Icarus, this is a University campus. There are bound to be all sorts of people around. What if someone comes here?”

“Naked University girls go swimming here all the time,” Icarus called out from the pond. “They’re not shy at all.” And what could we do but laugh at this? David and I looked at each other. I shrugged my shoulders and we started taking off our clothes and jumped in the water.

The water was a bit murky and stale as water in small ponds always is. Icarus claimed it was clean enough to drink, and drank a little bit just to prove it, but David and I declined to follow his example.

Next Icarus wanted to show us how long he could hold his breath. He closed his eyes and plunged into the water. We saw his shape go deeper and deeper under the water until we lost sight of him.

I went down under the water as well, just briefly. The water below the surface was a lot colder than the water warmed by the sun, so I didn’t stay under long.

When I came up, Icarus was still under. David and I were just on the point of wondering if he was all right, when he shot up to the surface and breathed in the air with a loud gasp. His usually curly hair was now wet and plastered against his forehead. A huge grin was across his face. “How about that?” he said between pants of air. “Wasn’t that a long time?”

We swam back to the shore. No one had a towel so we just shook some of the water off of our limbs, and then put our clothes on over our wet skin. The clothes stuck uncomfortably to our damp bodies, but the sun was out and we knew we would dry up soon.

It had been a refreshing swim, but in the end it was nothing noteworthy. We could go swimming or hiking through the woods anywhere. Now we were eager to see some of the actual campus buildings.

Because of the view we had seen from the top of the wall, we all had a general idea of where to go, but once again Icarus led the way, and David and I simply followed. The trees soon came to an abrupt end, and we walked out of the nature preserve. We walked across a long green field with well trimmed grass that must have been used for sporting events. Up ahead we could see a long building that looked like a gymnasium.

“This is one of the buildings my dad designed,” Icarus said proudly. “You can see it looks a lot newer than the other buildings. Of course they made an effort to make it fit in with the rest of the campus as much as possible. It imitates the old style. But if you look closely, you can tell.”

David and I looked over it briefly. This was the first building we had seen so far, so we had no way to compare, but it didn’t look like a new building to me. On the other hand, did people a thousand years ago really use gymnasiums? Maybe this was a more recent building.

“Come on, there’s something on the other side I want to show you,” said Icarus running excitedly. David and I broke into a jog to keep up with him. By the front entrance to the gym there was a statue of a soldier on a horse. The horse was running, and the rider had his sword drawn and pointed forward as if leading a charge.

“My Dad designed that as well. Flash wanted some sort of statue in front of the gymnasium, so my dad designed that statue to commemorate Flash’s victory in Canaan.”

The statue was absolutely huge. The round base of it alone was about as big as a classroom, and taller than any of us. The horse and rider must have been two or three times larger than life. We walked around the base of it in amazement.

“To commemorate the victory by our brave soldiers in the Canaan War,” David read aloud from the plaque. “Hey Jon, come look at this!”

I came around to the side David was on. Sure enough, there was a plaque confirming what Icarus had just said. Now how in the world would he have known that? How had he known this whole statue was here in the first place? For a second I almost believed it was all true; there really were secret entrances, and Icarus really did usually come and go as he pleased through the main gate. How else would you explain this?

And then suddenly the scales dropped from my eyes, and I suddenly realized what had been so obvious the whole time. Icarus had come here before using the grappling hook. That was why he had made it so look so easy when he climbed up the wall. He had lots of practice.

In spite of my irritation at Icarus for not being honest with us, I found myself respecting him even more once I realized this. He had wanted to get into the University, and so he had found a way to get around their wall. He hadn’t let their rules stop him. He was a little bit insane no doubt, but resourceful and clever.

David and I now fully accepted Icarus’s position as the expedition leader. “So Icarus, what’s the most interesting place to see first?” David asked.

“The art department,” Icarus answered immediately. “That’s where I always spend all my time when I come here.”

The art department didn’t sound very interesting to me, so I made another suggestion. “What about the chapel steeple? Can we really climb up there?”

“Of course we can. If you’re up to it that is.”

“I’m up for it.”

There were brick paths connecting the various campus buildings to each other, but Icarus cut diagonally across the lawn. David and I followed him, slowing down occasionally to admire the majestic old buildings on all sides of us. The old stone buildings were now covered with moss and ivy so that they looked more green than gray.

“Why isn’t there anyone else around?” David asked. “I would have thought the campus would be full of students.”

“It’s Saturday,” Icarus said in an authoritative voice. “There’s no classes on Saturday. Most everybody’s probably still sleeping or in their dorm rooms studying.”

“What about the trouble the guard was telling us about?” I asked. “Why don’t we see anything?”

“He was probably exaggerating,” Icarus said. “There’s never any trouble at this place.”

The university chapel was a lot more majestic than our school chapel. It was absolutely huge for one thing. Of course I was used to seeing the steeple from the town, but now I realized that the chapel beneath it was very impressive as well. It was even bigger than the church I went to, and much bigger than the church David and Icarus went to. The stained glassed windows were all done in the old style, and seeing them was the first time I remember feeling a connection to Fabulae’s history. I felt that if I touched them right now, they might open up a time portal and whisk me back into the ancient past.

We went to the front door, but it was locked. “Of course,” Icarus said. “It’s always locked between services. I should have remembered that.”

“So how do you get in?” I asked.

“Well there are lots of ways. Probably the easiest way is just to break one of these windows.” Icarus picked up a rock from the ground and tossed it up and down to indicate his readiness.

David and I were horrified at even the thought. Break one of these windows? They must have been at least a thousand years old. Just looking at them made you realize the rich history of this place.

But when we mentioned this objection, Icarus just shook his head. “Don’t be silly. Do you think people a thousand years ago even knew how to make glass? My Dad added these windows after the Restoration. He just tried to make them look as old as possible, that’s all.”

By now I was having a hard time sorting out what was true and what was false, but I felt that if we broke one of these beautiful windows I would have a hard time forgiving myself. David felt the same way.

“Okay, well, there is another way in,” Icarus said. “We can go through the back way.” He led us around to the basement doors at the back. Just like any other basement doors in any other building, these were sticking out of the ground at a diagonal angle. Two old wooden doors were kept shut with a wooden bar stuck between the handles, and an old padlock kept the bar in place. But the doors seemed to be long past replacing, and the wood was rotting away. The joints were rusty, and the whole thing looked like it would give way with just one solid tug.

Which apparently was what Icarus had in mind. He tugged fiercely at the handle. The door rattled, and the joints shook. The door didn’t give way the first time, but David and I joined in for the second pull. “It would have been a lot easier just to break the window,” Icarus grunted between pulls. And then, with one final pull, the whole thing broke loose suddenly, and we all fell back on the ground with the door in our hands.

Icarus stood up and dusted himself off. I did the same. My hands were reddish gray now with the rust from the door handle. I wiped most of it off on my pants.

“There’s no light down there so keep close to me,” Icarus said. “I know the way.”

Naturally when we first entered, the room was half illuminated by the daylight that came in through the doorway. But Icarus led us through what seemed like a maze of winding hallways. Soon it became pitch black and I couldn’t have seen my hand in front of my face. I had no idea where I was going, and David and I tried to stay as close to Icarus as we could. Fortunately Icarus kept up a steady stream of conversation, so I was always assured he was right in front of me, but he walked a lot faster than I wanted to go in the dark. It’s a bit scary to be walking quickly through a room when you can’t see anything.

At last we emerged from the basement and into the main part of the chapel. Sunlight here shone through the windows. The light was tainted by the stained glass, bathing the room in the sort of colored light peculiar to churches, but we could at last see again.

Icarus didn’t waste any time. “Did you want to climb up the steeple?” He walked over to the front of the chapel and pointed upwards where, directly above the minister’s pulpit, the ceiling seemed to have been sucked upwards into a vertical point, as if the heavens had suddenly opened up. A couple ropes used for ringing the church bell hung in the back.

“How do we get up there?” David asked.

“They have a bell up at the top, and sometimes they need to clean it, so there is a ladder going up,” Icarus said. He pointed to a ladder that was built into the wall at the far corner. I was glad to see that. For a second I thought Icarus was going to suggest we climb up the ropes for the bell.

Icarus climbed up first and we followed him. The ladder went straight up to the ceiling, at which point Icarus opened a little hatch and we climbed up unto the roof. Then, leading all the way up the steeple there were several planks of wood nailed down into the building, which acted as a ladder of sorts. Again, Icarus climbed first and David and I followed.

I had never really climbed any high heights before, but I remembered something my father had said once about not looking down. I kept that advice in my head throughout the whole climb. I looked only at the bars of wood in front of me, and occasionally at the bottom of Icarus’ feet above me. I could hear David climbing below me, but I never once looked down at him.

Icarus climbed swiftly up, but I didn’t even try to follow his pace. I didn’t advance to the next rung until I was sure I had a strong grip on where I was. I was too concentrated on what I was doing to feel nervous, but I did notice a lot of sweat on the palms of my hands, and I began to worry that my grip might slip. I tried to lean in towards the steeple so that if I did slip I would fall forward into the wall instead of backwards into the air.

Once we got up to the bell, there was a bit of a ledge we could stand on. We could also hold onto the four thin pillars, which supported the very top of the steeple. There were ropes from the bell leading down into the steeple shaft so that the bell could be rung from the ground floor, and for a long time my only thought was, “If someone were to ring this bell right now, the sound might knock me right off.”

When David arrived at the top, his face was completely white. I imagined I looked the same. Icarus couldn’t have been more at ease. “Isn’t it great up here?” he asked. “They say that when the chapel choir sings, the angels gather up near the steeple to listen.” I believed it. Clearly where we were was not where men were supposed to be. This was the realm of birds and the angels. Icarus was starring off into space as if he could actually see the angels up here, and for a second I thought I could see them also.

“You can get even higher if you want to,” Icarus said, turning around so he was facing the bell.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said.

“Icarus, no!” David practically shouted. “Don’t even think about it.”

Icarus placed his hands on the top of the covering. He pulled himself up while pushing off the bell with his legs. His body wriggled around for a while, but eventually he pulled himself up. Again, I was amazed at the natural ease with which he did it.

Standing at the very top, Icarus simply grabbed onto the cross for support. Since David and I were still the roof, I had to crane my head out to see him, but he seemed the picture of perfect calm even from up there. He was even leaning out to get a better view, keeping only one hand on the cross. “Hey, check that out,” he yelled.

Least I forget to mention it, the view from the steeple was magnificent. I was a bit too nervous to notice it at the time, but I could not only see the whole University. I could see the whole city. I could even see the hills over by where my house was. And, if I had been in a slightly calmer and more observant mood, I think I could probably have pinpointed my house.

But what Icarus was referring to was a lot closer. I followed his finger almost straight down, and saw that he was looking at the main gate to the university that we had been refused entry to a few hours before. It was now a beehive of activity, but from the inside of the campus, not from the outside. Hundreds of people were rushing back and forth bringing what looked like furniture, tables, chairs, and bed frames, and stacking them in front of the entrance.

“I don’t remember seeing that,” I said.

“They must have started after we left,” David answered.

“I wonder if I could get even higher,” Icarus wondered.

I was initially puzzled by this non sequitar, but then looking up at him I saw what he meant. He was now climbing onto the cross itself. His two feet were perched on each of the outstretched arms. He kept himself in a crouched position so he could still hang onto the top of the cross, but it still struck me as the height of foolishness and I thought that if we didn’t leave the steeple soon Icarus was likely to kill himself.

“Let’s get down from here and see what’s going on by the gate,” I suggested. David, who had never once looked at ease from the moment we climbed up, readily agreed. Icarus began to follow us when he saw we were going down.

The way down was almost more frightening than the way up, because I couldn’t see the steps below me. But we slowly made our way down to the roof of the church, and from there we opened the hatch and went all the way down to the floor. I didn’t think I would be, but I was very relieved to be back on the ground again.

Icarus was the last to come down, but then he insisted on taking the lead again and we followed him towards the gate. The closer we got to the gate the more activity we could see. People, University students, were running back and forth. We passed two of them carrying a sofa. “Hey, how about a little help here?” one of them called out.

The three of us stopped and just looked at each other. We didn’t even know the people who were calling us. “Well, are you part of this or not?” the student carrying the sofa asked.

“We’re part of it,” Icarus said eagerly, running forward to help carry the sofa. David and I soon found ourselves helping as well.

With five people carrying the sofa, the load was light and we soon carried it all the way to the gate, where it was thrown on the pile with the other furniture. “Alright Stephen, what do you need next?” yelled out one of the sofa carriers.

Stephen, a student on the top of the pile was giving orders to people down beneath him. “We need more mattresses,” he said. “If they start firing, we’ll need the mattresses for padding. Go through the dorms. Pull out every mattress you can find.”

He pointed directly at us. I tried to speak up to tell him that we weren’t really students here, but Icarus opened his mouth before I could. “It will take too much time to go to every bed room. What about just going to the storage closet? They have tons of mattresses just laying around, and it’s a lot closer to here than the dormitories.”

“Great, go there,” he yelled at us.

“There’s just one problem,” Icarus spoke up again. “The door to the storage room is locked. It’s a new door as well; we wouldn’t be able to break it down very easily. We’ll need the key.”

“Give him the key,” shouted Stephen.

The command about the key was echoed down the line for a while before someone stepped up and handed a set to Icarus. “These are the master keys,” he said. “We were able to liberate them from the President’s office. This will get you into any room on campus.”

“How many mattresses do you want?” Icarus asked.

“All of them,” Stephen answered. “Get everyone that you can. Make as many trips as you have to.”

And so Icarus was off running. David and I followed behind. Icarus started off at his full speed run, and would have left David and I behind but I shouted at him to slow down.

“Icarus, what are we doing?” I asked. “Why are we getting mattresses?”

“Because they asked us to,” he answered with an empty face.

“But we don’t even know who they are,” I said. “We didn’t sneak into here so we could spend all day dragging mattresses back and forth. Why are we letting them order us around?”

Icarus stared back at me blankly as if he was only now considering this question. Then he opened his hand and held up the key, and his eyes lit up. “But look what they gave us.” He held the key directly up to my face. “We can get into any room on campus we want with this. We could even go into Flash’s office. Do you know he keeps an office on campus?”

“Well, let’s do that instead then. Forget about the mattresses.”

I could see David shift uncomfortably. “Jon, if you don’t want to get the mattresses, we don’t have to. But we should at least tell them we’re not going to. What if it is important and they’re waiting for us?”

“Then we’d have to give the key back,” I said.

“Fine. It’s their key anyway.”

“No its not. They stole it from the president’s office. They just said so themselves.”

David sighed angrily. Icarus spoke up. “We’ll go into Flash’s office after we go into the storage room. Besides, there’s all sorts of cool stuff in the storage room. They have sports equipment, balls and play fencing swords and stuff. And they have treasures. There are antiques that are hundreds of years old. After we get all the mattresses out, we could take whatever we wanted.”

We followed Icarus to a large gray building and he used the keys to open the doors. We followed him inside the hallway, and then he used the keys to open another door. Just like Icarus said, the room was huge and filled with all sorts of treasures. “After the Restoration they took all the really old artwork down from the walls,” Icarus said.

“Why would they do that?” David asked.

“I don’t know. Flash didn’t want all that old stuff lying around anymore maybe. I really don’t know. But afterwards they didn’t know what to with it, so they just put everything in here. The art in this room is hundreds of years old. Most of it is priceless.” He paused to survey the room. “And just think, we could take whatever we want.”

“I don’t think we can just take it,” David said. “It doesn’t belong to us, even if we do have the key.”

“Look at this though,” Icarus said, not really hearing David. “You never see designs like this anymore. People in the old days could really paint.”

Just about that time there was a large crashing sound. It was very loud, but it echoed through the air as though it had come from a distance. “What was that?” David asked.

“Probably nothing,” Icarus replied. “Maybe that pile they were building finally collapsed on them. Do you guys see anything here you want?”

“What am I going to do with a bunch of old pictures?” I said. “Leave them here.”

“We should at least bring over some mattresses,” David said. “We told them we would.”

The mattresses were bigger than we were. They weren’t heavy, but we had a hard time balancing one as we tried to carry it. Icarus especially with his skinny arms could barely lift one of them up. David suggested we drag the mattresses instead of carrying them, and we tried that for a while. I put the mattress on the side, and tried to pull it out of the room, but the mattresses was old and flimsy and it kept falling over or folding in on itself. After the third time it fell down, I kicked it several times in frustration.

“The hell with this. They can carry their own damn mattresses.”

“They’ve been waiting for us for a long time Jon. Let’s at least bring them one mattress.” That was David. He was always trying to please other people. He didn’t even know these students, and yet he didn’t want them to be upset at us.

We agreed to take one mattress between the three of us. With three pairs of arms, it was a lot easier and we were able to get it out of the room with very little effort. We were just about to leave the building, when we heard several cracking exploding sounds, like fireworks. Again, the sound seemed to be coming from a distance. We all looked at each other in silence, trying to decipher the sound. I spoke first. “What’s that?”

“They’re probably just setting of a bunch of firecrackers,” Icarus said. “To celebrate that big pile of junk they built.”

I could tell by David’s face that he was thinking the same thing I was. “At noon?” David asked. “They wouldn’t be able to see anything when it’s this bright out.”

“Didn’t Stephen say something about firing,” I said. “That’s why he wanted the mattresses, right? To block some sort of fire.”

As of one mind, the three of us immediately dropped the mattress and started running towards the gate. As we neared the gate, I shivered slightly when I noticed that no students were around this time. The beehive of activity had vanished into the wind.

And when we got to the main gate, the pile of furniture was lying scattered, and the gate was wide open. Soldiers were now running in through the open gate.

My first instinct was just to watch the scene with an open mouth, trying to figure out what was going on. But then the some of the soldiers started running towards us.

“Let’s get out of here,” I yelled. It was what all three of us were all thinking, but for some reason I was the one who felt the need to vocalize it. We all turned and ran.

We ran across the campus. Icarus was leaps and bounds ahead of David and I as we struggled to keep up with him. I wasn’t sure if the soldiers were still behind us or not. I didn’t dare turn around to find out. We were just running blindly forward.

I soon lost track of which way I was going. “Icarus,” I yelled out. “Which way is it?” I meant the rope that we had left behind.

“I don’t know,” Icarus yelled back. “Just run.”

We were blindly following Icarus, who was blindly following his impulses. We ran around another building, turned a corner, and almost ran into another group of soldiers coming the other way.

Icarus abruptly turned and began running across the field. Soldiers were coming at us from both sides now. David and I were running side-by-side. I think he got tackled first, but I was soon after. Icarus, as if he had wings on his feet, suddenly burst into a great speed. The soldiers leaped at him, but he escaped them all and ran on. As the soldiers held me down, I watched Icarus’s feet disappear in the distance.

“Blast, that one got away.”

“No matter. We’ve still got these two.”

“Scum. I should break his nose in with my rifle.”

The soldiers spoke in a strange accent I couldn’t place. It didn’t sound foreign, but they were definitely not from around this area.

I was yanked to my feet, and one of them pulled my head back by the hair. Another one bent his arms and held his rifle butt ready to smash into my face. I didn’t have time to be frightened; it was all happening so quickly. “This is for your friend who got away,” he said. I closed my eyes and waited for the blow.

“You dumb hicks, get your hands off of him,” a voice called from the distance. It was a booming voice filled with the authority of a man who was used to being obeyed. It did not have the same strange accent as the other soldiers. “Don’t you realize whose son that is?”

The soldiers sprang back and dropped me as if my skin was on fire. I looked over and saw a huge hulking specimen of a man striding angrily towards us. He almost reminded me of the old mythical giant stories. Not only was he was tall, but he had an incredibly thick set build as well. He had on a soldier’s uniform, but his sleeves could hardly contain his hairy arms.

He grabbed me by the arm and jerked me roughly away from the group of soldiers. As he tugged on my arm, my whole body followed like a paper doll. “You can smash all the other students to your heart’s delight, but if anyone lays a hand on this boy they’ll be answering to the Duke himself.” After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “Better give me his friend as well, just in case.” David was pushed over next to me.

“Bring me a messenger,” the giant added. “We’re going to need to tell his father about this.” He looked at me, and he almost grinned. “And I don’t think he’s going to be happy to hear about it.”